SOURCE: “Primary Process Mentation and the Structure of Timon of Athens,” in University of Hartford Studies in Literature, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1979, pp. 24-35.

In the essay below, Neiditz suggests reinterpreting Timon of Athens, noting the dream-like state of the play and its symbolism.

Interpretations of Timon of Athens have led us astray by forcing the play into a logical, sequential mold with conclusions that Shakespeare was exhausted, suffering from a nervous breakdown or portraying a “syphlitic” character.1 Only Miss Ellis-Fermor, speaking of the Alcibiades-Senate scene, grasped the fact that it tumbles “suddenly into the action with the bewildering inconsequence of a dream.”2

If we approach the play like a dream, we recognize Shakespeare's suggestion of the simultaneity of time, the fulfillment of erotic and aggressive wishes through diction and plot, the predominance of cannibalistic and persecutory imagery, the splitting of four major figures to represent different aspects of the...